Is there any city as cool as Chicago that has produced a legacy of such insignificant rock bands? I’m not talking about Chicago’s excellent R&B and Blues scenes, but rather the Windy City’s white-boy rock lineage.
Starting with the 1960’s, the Second City gave us such musical luminaries as The Shadows of Night, The Buckinghams (kind of a drag, indeed!), The Cryin’ Shames, New Colony Six, The Ides of March, and of course, Chicago. With the exception of Chicago (the band), the compete sum of the above mentioned bands’ hits could barely fill a Greatest Hits CD (believe me, I know my GH collections).
The 1970s gave us, if we consider the broad Chicago region, Styx, Cheap Trick, Shoes, Survivor, and that’s probably – thankfully – it. With the exception of the number of strings that a bass guitar can hold, none of these bands is going down in history as having changed anything.
The 1980s and 1990s gave us the likes of Ministry, Liz Phair, Big Black, Naked Raygun, Smashing Pumpkins, Veruca Salt, Material Issue, Wilco, and Green. With the exception of Wilco and Steve Albini as a producer and provacateur, these artists would not be included in anyone’s Rock Time Capsule.
Chicago is an awesome city – I lived there for most of the ’90s and witnessed firsthand the rise of the “Wicker Park scene.” Chicago is a magnet for anyone west of Cleveland and east of Iowa, so the city certainly makes up in quantity of bands what it lacks in quality, but none has the gravitas to be truly influential. Why then the suckage? Is it too good of a city? Are the people too nice? Is it tied to the curse of the billy goat? What do you think?
Because Chicago is a comedy/acting town. Musicians don’t move there, actors and comedians do.
Actually, when I was in theatre school, that was always my plan, to move to Chicago after graduation…
I think Chicago’s weaknesses as a rock city has to do with a combination of factors, including:
Philadelphia’s cool enough and it’s rock legacy may be worse than Chicago’s. No offense to the Philly musicians around here.
Great observation, but when you exclude important sub-genres from the tally of music produced by a city, to only list Rawk, then most U.S. cities will be found wanting. Dismissing the blues from Chicago does make the output look paltry. Excluding Doo Wop or Soul from Philadelphia leaves us with only the awesome sounds of Duck Tape and Beru Review (heavy sarcasm for out-of-towners) There are probably a dozen minor type bands out of the 1980s Boston scene that I really enjoy, but they aren’t important enough to belong in the pantheon. For the 10 points you get for creating Aerosmith, you need to subtract 9 for creating Boston. Maybe only San Fran from the late 60s, NYC from the late 70s, or L.A. from the 80s (if you like that sort of thing) can claim to have been responsible for an impressive list that can rival English cities from the 60s. It’s hard to find any U.S. city that has produced a bunch of quality rawkers vastly outnumbering the drek. Chicago may be more apparent due to it’s large population and geographic importance. Athens, Ga best RPC? Rawk per capita.
Am I the only one who here who’s actually a fan of ’80s Chicago punk/hardcore like Naked Raygun, Effigies, Big Black, Screeching Weasel, etc., not to mention the debut albums by Liz Phair, Smashing Pumpkins and of course Cheap Trick (who you underrate severely)? Sheesh.
I’d add New Orleans and Memphis in the 50s and 60s. Maybe substitute Manchester for L.A. in the 80s. (What were the 80s L.A. bands I’m supposed to be impressed by?)
Actually I don’t think NYC, L.A., or London should count, since musicians move to major media centers to ‘make it,’ and those cities get credit for people who aren’t local.
What’s the Wicker Park scene?
Manchester, New Hampshire? Shakedown Street playing at the Loon Mountain Snow Bunny Lodge happy hour are pretty friggin awesome.
Your right that Memphis should be extremely proud.
L.A. can boast of having the titans of the hardcore scene like Black Flag, Circle Jerks, Dead Kennedys, the Germs, etc. Like them or not, it was a prolific scene.
I missed maybe the most fruitful city scene (tied with Memphis?) of all in the U.S.; Detroit in the 60s.
I do see the point here
Its big city on par with LA and NY but in comparison has relatively pathetic rock ouput. I agree that early Cheap Trick is underrated in these parts and I’d throw Eleventh Dreamday out as pretty great and solidly “Chicago” band (but certainly didn’t have the impact.)
I lived there for 6 years and the rock scene was thriving as far as venues, record stores, radio… But not a lot of local bands have had an impact.
I hear the comedy/acting thing and that’s very true but I think that the Blues, being almost synonymous with the city as some sort of psychological hold over it.
Yeah, I’d have to agree with several other comments that Cheap Trick, to my mind, is a major rock band and certainly a touchstone of its era. Its powerful deflation of the rock pretension of its era was and is a big deal. Cheap Trick or Aerosmith? I know who I’d pick, Philly rawkers.
And chickenfrank, of course, makes the most crucial point, and not for the first time. Even if you’re one of those narrow-minded folks who think that rock and roll can be talked about without referencing the blues more than just a little, I still have not the slightest clue how you could talk about rock and roll without talking about Muddy Waters.
Many people here already know my ardent appreciation of Cheap Trick… but they’re not really a Chicago band.
I feel Chicago has made some contributions to rock, for better or worse: Wax Trax Records, math-rock and post-rock, Jim O’Rourke. Not all of this may be to the tastes of RTH (I’m not terribly interested in much of it myself), but each has its significance, even if on the small-rock scale. And I do think that Chicago has a larger rock profile than Philly.
Thanks for your excellent responses.
Big Steve – The Wicker Park Scene is the whole Brad Wood/Liz Phair scene. Wicker Park is the neighborhood where Brad had his studio. In the mid-90’s it became one of Chicago’s most gentrified hoods.
Chickenfrank – I’ve got my eye on you buddy boy. I expect big things from you.
Berlaynt – Screeching Weasle? Legacy? Gimme a break.
Cheap Trick is closest to having an impact. That’s why it’s a “Half Assed Rant”. You can shoot a lot of holes in it but on the surface is correct.
YO, Urge Overkill!
Whatever the contributions of the Windy City are to the history of Rock, I feel compelled to point out that the Styx video you posted showcases an astonishing array of Look issues!
I’m not a fan of Urge Overkill, in part because I went to college with that Katruud guy and he was a total tool. When he and Albini feuded (Albini went to the same school) Steve had a great quote, something to the effect of “I’ll be making music for years and years to come while you’ll end up sucking dick in the bus depot for pocket change.”
Do people take Urge Overkill seriously? I’d put them in the joke-rock category like another legendary Chicago band The Cocktails.
The Styx video is great. I tried to find a Survivor video with no luck. My orginal thought was to get a clip of Billy Corrgan wrapping with 4 olde-school Chicago sports writers on a cable show called “The Sports Reporters”. At the height of “melloncollie…” Billy was all over Chcago sports.
The way DeYoung attacks his synth at the beginning lets you know this is one keyboardist who never needed a keytar. He knew how to ham it up with whatever set of keys he had.
One of those rock moments that I still sometimes wonder if it actually happened, if I maybe just dreamed it.
Actually, when you consider all the bands that basically their entire sound and image from Screeching Weasel — see: later Queers, Mr. T Experience, Smugglers…well, pretty much every band that ever recorded for Lookout! — then I’d say SW have a bigger legacy than the average Chicago band.
the great 48 wrote:
Are you trying to support Andy’s premise?
Actually, long hours at work lately don’t give me time to pursue this, but I’d love to see a Best Rock Town poll or discussion some time.
Oh and can someone please explain this HTML tagging business to me (off-list if need be)? Obviously from my above post and another previous post where I put more stuff in italics than I intended to, I don’t know its conventions.
Tips on HTML Tagging is located here, in the RTH User’s Guide
Thank you for your attention.
The Back Office
OK here’s my 2nd attempt. Here’s what someone originally wrote:
And here’s my response from above (this time hopefully not inside of the blockquote):
Thank you for beating me to the punch here. I would add TSOL, Adolescents, Social Distortion, Agent Orange, The Minutemen and others to that list as well, though most of those bands are OC bands (not LA technically). Furthermore, what about the entirety of the Paisley Underground scene (Green on Red, Dream Syndicate, The Three O’Clock), not to mention Red Kross or The Last (a precursor to the Paisley Underground thing) or the roots of alt-country (Gun Club, The Blasters, Rank and File)?
Also that’s very true re: Screeching Weasel, Stewart. I added them to my list of great ’80s Chi-town punk bands almost as an afterthought since they made their greatest impact in the ’90s (though Boogada…, their best record, originally came out in 1988).
OK now I got it. Thanks Back Office. Another satisfied customer helped by the Back Office. 🙂
To those of you who boasted of all the tremendous hardcore bands that LA can boast of…where were you votes for LA on today’s (Friday’s) poll? As of 6:05 EST, the great state of California has been SHUT OUT. Memphis holds onto a slim lead over NYC. Stay tuned…